


Hamlet: Tragedy or Comedy?

by Littlebluejay_hidingpeanuts



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare, Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:08:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22423081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littlebluejay_hidingpeanuts/pseuds/Littlebluejay_hidingpeanuts
Summary: Brief essay on the violence in Hamlet becoming both comedic and tragic.
Kudos: 1





	Hamlet: Tragedy or Comedy?

William Shakespeare’s  Hamlet is a tragic, violent play. Each of the characters has a flaw which leads to their tragic demise. Two scenes stand out the most in their violence and evidence of the characters’ flaws. These scenes are Act 3 Scene 4 in Queen Gertrude’s closet and Act 5’s death scene. These scenes, though violent, are humorous. The scenes show the true tragedy of the play in that the most violent scenes of death can be considered laughable. 

During Act 3 Scene 4, Hamlet comes to his mother’s bedroom, but leaves accompanied by a corpse. His mother, Queen Gertrude, seems to have a romantic infatuation with Hamlet as she yearns for his company. Hamlet tells his mother that his uncle, her new husband and the new king, is the killer of the old king, her ex- and Hamlet’s father. It cannot be recognized whether the Queen knew or not of her former husband’s murder. Her reaction is ambiguous leading the audience to suspect her innocence and fault her ignorance. After much yelling and threatening, the scene rises in tension and comes to a climax as Hamlet forcefully draws his sword and plunges it into the tapestry. This action was not caused by an abundance of emotion, but because he believed his murderous uncle to be behind the heavy cloth. Unfortunately, he is wrong and kills the wrong man! When Hamlet discovers that the person was Polonius, his father-in-law-to-be, and not his uncle ---who could not possibly be behind the tapestry because Hamlet had just left him in the chapel praying—Hamlet shows no remorse and begins to joke about the dead man as being “a grave man.” This is a turning point in the play where Hamlet, who had been very undecided about killing his uncle, finally has made peace with his conscience and is reminded of the dishonor done to his father’s memory. He finds the power within himself to exact revenge. This scene adds to the meaning of the entire play in being its climax. 

The resolution of the play is the second scene of violent importance. Act 5 Scene 2 is when every still-living, major character in the play dies. Over the course of  Hamlet , Hamlet’s girlfriend Ophelia, her father Polonius, and two of Hamlet’s boyhood friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern die in painful, emotional, yet very brief ways. In the last scene, Hamlet’s uncle and his dead girlfriend’s brother Laertes plot to kill Hamlet either by poisoned sword or poisoned wine. Laertes demands a duel of Hamlet who agrees. In the process of their fight in front of the court, Hamlet gets cut with Laertes’ poisoned sword. Instead of dropping dead or even showing real pain, Hamlet proceeds to fight Laertes with Laertes’ own sword that had switched hands during the melee until Laertes is cut deeply. The Queen drinks to her son, but does so with the poisoned wine. She dies. Laertes, in great physical pain, tells Hamlet of the poisons and asks for forgiveness. Hamlet, in great emotional pain, accepts Laertes’ words and goes after his uncle who he stabs with the sword, and then forces to drink the poisoned wine. The uncle dies closely followed by Laertes. Finally after much conversation, Hamlet dies from his poisoned cut. As much as death and murder are disliked subjects, comedy and tragedy go hand-in-hand. The play’s resolution does not engage a feeling of catharsis in the modern audience. Instead the drama and never-ending deaths of fatally flawed characters becomes humorous. Nothing causes a person to laugh harder than the melodramatic deaths of every single major character. 

Hamlet mistakenly killing the wrong man in his rage and then the deaths of every major character are violent. Sadly, each death adds to the comedy; this is the tragedy of the play. The more people laugh at death, the more tragic the situation becomes. 


End file.
